George Elgood listened with a mingling of amaze, amusement, and tenderness to the hidden history of the weeks at Glenaire. Being in the frame of mind when everything that Margot did seemed perfect in his eyes, he felt nothing but admiration for her efforts on her brother’s behalf.
It was an ingenious, unselfish little scheme, and the manner in which she had laid it bare to the person most concerned was delightfully unsophisticated. He laughed at her tenderly, stroking her soft, pretty hair with his big man’s hand, the while he explained that he was a business man pure and simple, and had made no excursions whatever into literature; that the “writing” with which he had been occupied was connected with proposed changes in his firm, and a report of a technical character.
Margot flamed with indignation, but before the angry words had time to form themselves on her lips, the thought occurred that after all the help vouchsafed to her had been no pretence, but a very substantial reality. Ron’s foot had been placed on the first rung of the ladder, while as for herself, what greater good could she have found to desire than that which, through the Chieftain’s machinations, had already come to pass? She lifted her face to meet the anxious, adoring gaze bent upon her, and cried hurriedly—
“He—he meant it all the time! He meant it to happen!”
“Meant what, darling?”
“This!”
Margot waved her hand with a gesture sufficiently expressive, whereat her lover laughed happily.
“Bless him! of course he did. He has been badgering me for years past to look out for a wife; and when we met you he was clever enough to realise that you were the one woman to fill the post. If he had said as much to me at that stage of affairs, I should have packed up and made off within the hour; if he had said it to you, you would have felt it incumbent upon you to do the same. Instead, he let you go on in your illusion, while he designed the means of throwing us into each other’s society. Good old Geoff! I’m not at all angry with him. Are you?”
Margot considered the point, her head tilted to a thoughtful angle.
“I’m—not—sure! I think I am, just a little bit, for I hate to be taken in. He was laughing at me all the time.”